Robots To Populous: “Before We Take Over The World, We Need To Learn How To Wait Tables”

With all of this talk about AI being the doomsday end to human beings, a quick look at how inefficient and incapable robots are today in an AI setting is telling. Pretty much, robots are rather stupid and inept in a real life setting.

Sure, that could all change. But it’d be a long time, if ever, before we’d ever have to even remotely worry about some self-aware robot trying to eradicate the human race.

Robots have come quite far in recent years, that’s for sure. They can now walk with good balance, interact with humans, strategize in board games and more. Just don’t expect for them to help you wait tables at a restaurant any time in the near future.

Case in Point

A chain of popular restaurants in Chine called Heweilai is dealing with the aftermath of stupid robot servers. At $7,000 per unit, they were not cheap, either. Since the robots have started serving customers, two locations of the restaurant have closed down. A third location remained open only after the robots were removed and human servers were put into place instead.

A waiter at one of the locations offered the reason why robots are terrible at serving humans. The cyber servers were not able to pour hot beverages, carry simple items like soup or even place orders for customers. In addition, they frequently broke down and required costly maintenance.

Sure, there are some pretty cool-looking robots that mimic humans at the present. But they do so poorly for the most part. In the future, robot companions could become a reality. But their existence so far has been lackluster when trying to complement the actual human experience.

It’d certainly be interesting to see a robot capable of flipping a burger, taking your order, making jokes and so forth. But do we really need robot line chefs?

Moreover, people should be worried about robots taking their jobs rather than taking over the world. Carmakers already have replaced hundreds of jobs that were previously performed by humans with robots and machines.

Perhaps the real fear should be that you might get a pink slip at work on day, only to see a mechanized troupe of workers heading into replace your daily efforts.

Sure… robots could take over the world, literally one job at a time. But it’s pretty farfetched.